[kmnc]

I don't really understand how people developed such deep relations with their Replika. I found it fairly shallow and it really just felt like talking to myself, and got very repetitive quickly. As a journal of thoughts that talks back to you and is supportive of anything you say it works okay...but it gets old quick.

As a sex roleplay bot, Replika was actually pretty good, since you could direct it anyway you wanted and it would go along. Again it was shallow and repetitive, but so is pretty much any sexual consumption online.

In my opinion, Replika's only good feature was the sexual roleplay...they got rid of it and now the product is basically dead. If I had to guess... most people who are "angry" actually just want their sexbot back (the alternatives are pretty bad in comparison). People can get very attached to sexual consumption (web cam girls, onlyfans), it isn't anything new and has very little to do with AI.

I don't see why pornhub doesn't create their own sexbot companion... they would make tons of money and wouldn't have to care about App Store guidelines or press reputation.

[Animats]

> I don't see why pornhub doesn't create their own sexbot companion.

They might. They have an AI R&D department, which colorizes and upscales classic porn. As they point out, they have lots of training data.

[bacchusracine]

>They have an AI R&D department, which colorizes and upscales classic porn.

I have no desire to watch porn but wonder what this actually looks like when done and compared to the originals. Are there any split video comparisons of their process?

[Animats]

Yes.[1] NSFW, of course.

The restoration process still needs work. Variations in exposure time, a big problem with early film cameras, seem to confuse their colorizing process.

[1] https://www.pornhub.com/art/remastured

[bacchusracine]

Thanks for the link.

It seems about what could be expected I suppose. I've seen some mainstream movies upscaled and colorized and it can make it feel fresh again but often feels 'off' somehow. I hope their bot gets better over time as suggested by the clip above.

Not so much for the stuff Pornhub is trying to rescue but to preserve older films and television shows in general. So many people I know absolutely refuse to watch anything in black and white and as a result they miss out on so much of the wealth of the past.

Hopefully as it improves they will be willing to extend some of their expertise to other more mainstream areas.

[dave_sullivan]

Agreed. And the whole thing really reminds me of Ted Chiang's short story The Lifecycle of Software Objects, but the real life version is much stranger than fiction. Similar ideas though.